May 24, 2017

It's coming up really soon! June 16-25 to be exact. It's the 23rd Annual North by Northeast music festival, more commonly known as NXNE or Northby. Yup, this year it's expanding to ten days, with a dynamic selection of music, gaming, comedy, and more. I hope to be there to capture all the action. Check out the coverage from last year, in case you missed it.

NXNE returns to the Port Lands for three days from June 23-25, 2017. NXNE Port Lands will include two main stages, art installations, sponsor activations, and comfortable places to chill between acts, as well as a comedy tent, and carnival rides.

This year's NXNE Port Lands music festival features: Passion Pit, Tyler the Creator, Post Malone, Bleachers, Sleigh Bells, The Soul Rebels featuring Talib Kweli, Twin Peaks, Cold Specks, Muna, Son Little and dozens more. NXNE's Club Land festival will feature the best up-and-coming bands as curated by some of Canada's best musicians.

"In it's first year the NXNE Port Lands saw thousands of attendees in two days," said Michael Hollett, President and Managing Director of NXNE. "Our growth and expansion for 2017 are based on the success of last year with cool programming from indie rock to hip hop to soul and much more each day."

Let’s hope they found a way to pipe in fresh water for this year!

New for this year is a curated club series featuring line-ups hand picked by Moe Berg of The Pursuit of Happiness, Ian D’Sa of Billy Talent, Brendan Canning of Broken Social Scene, Shad, Leah Fay of July Talk, Nick Rose, Tasha the Amazon, The Dirty Nil, Rural Alberta Advantage and Raina Douris from Indie 88 and CBC. These shows are Monday through Thursday at venues including The Baby G, The Garrison, Cold Tea, The Rivoli, The Dakota Tavern, Bovine Sex Club and The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern.

NXNE Game Land will kick off the 2017 Festival at Yonge-Dundas Square with a massive live e-Sports competition, new video game demos, interactive activations, and live music June 16-18, 2017.

From June 19-25, 2017 NXNE will host hundreds of new and established artists at over a dozen venues across the city for NXNE Club Land, including The Danforth Music Hall, The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern, and Adelaide Hall.

May 14, 2017

On Saturday May 6, 2017, Father John Misty played his second sold-out show at the historic and newly renovated Royal Alexandra Theatre (with appreciably more spacious seats). Father John Misty attracted bearded bros and hipster-types on the younger-end of the age spectrum who were able to afford the more-costly-than-average tickets.

Opening for Father John Misty was Dams of the West—a solo project from Chris Tomson (perhaps more commonly known as the drummer from Vampire Weekend). Tomson played songs from his debut album Youngish American—a mellow, droll, rock record produced by Patrick Carney of The Black Keys. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Dams of the West opened up for Father John Misty as Chris Tomson and Josh Tillman share so many similarities. Both artists started out as drummers in other bands (Vampire Weekend and Fleet Foxes) before breaking out into solo careers. They also share an acute sense of self-awareness and knack for dry humour. But whereas Tillman contemplates the meaning of life from a theatrical, grandiose perspective, Tomson analyzes his life from a domestic mundanity. During the performance, Tomson was joined onstage by a bassist, keyboardist, and drummer. In between songs, Tomson was wry, abrupt, and awkward. For example, he seemed embarrassed by the redundancy of having to introduce his band’s name when it was already projected behind him in big letters (but truth be told, the font and background colour were quite similar and hard to distinguish so I’m sure the introduction was appreciated by many). Tomson later went on to describe some of his more popular songs like “Death Wish” and “Tell the Truth” as “songs you might know, but also might not”. For their penultimate song, they played a cover of Alan Jackson’s “Chattahoochee”, a fun, honky tonk, country ditty. Towards the end of their short set, Tomson joked that if he knew he was going to be opening for Father John Misty, he would have taken better care of himself.

Father John Misty started promptly at 9 pm and played the first eight songs of his newest album Pure Comedy in chronological order (apart from “Leaving LA”—a thirteen minute self-aware diatribe about L.A. culture, his appearance, personal relationship to music, among other topics). He began the set with “Pure Comedy”, a song about humanity, evolution, and stupidity of religion. Whereas Father John Misty’s second album I Love You, Honeybear tackled the theme of love, marriage, and relationships, Pure Comedy revolves around the current state of the human condition—the idiocy of politics, need for religion, slavery of entertainment, addiction to social media, left-wing idealism, and so on and so forth. However depressing and cynical the overarching message may feel, there are small glimmers of hope sprinkled throughout which makes the album seem a little less nihilistic.

Last year at NXNE Port Lands Festival, Father John Misty entertained and captivated the audience with his strong stage persona and charisma. While Tillman has become “a little less human with each release/ closing the gap between the mask and me”, his performance seemed relatively unchanged as he continued to flounce about with the same flamboyance—shifting between confidently dancing around stage and uncomfortably crossing his arms or putting his hands in his pockets during more introspective moments. Tillman kept banter to a minimum, encouraging the crowd sit down at certain points (because “that’s what seats are for” and why they purposely had the show at a theatre rather than a “concrete box”) but also stand up (at the appropriate points during the encore). In the quiet moments in between songs, when crowd members started to hoot and holler, Tillman commented that he hoped those were sounds of joy rather than anxiety. He later added, “everything terrifies me, so I joke”, which seems like an accurate insight into Tillman’s thoughts behind the music and how the persona of Father John Misty came to be—using humor to mask more somber themes.

The music itself and the sound at Royal Alexandra Theatre was phenomenal. Father John Misty’s voice was forceful and clear as he switched between singing and playing the guitar. He was accompanied onstage by about fifteen instrumentalists, which included a full string section accented by a couple of brass instruments. Father John Misty played for almost two hours straight and delved into older songs from I Love You, Honeybear and Fear Fun. It was a long and ambitious set list with five songs for the encore. Like any pleasant experience, I anxiously awaited the end that I didn’t want, but knew would eventually come.

This year for CMW, the band played The Bovine Sex Club on April 21, celebrating the recent release of their latest album Opus Mar. Their set featured tunes from the new album like "Move Mountains", "Anti-Anthem", "Sleep Tight" and "Free Yourself".

The new tunes sounded amazing live and fit right in with the older tunes like "Go Go Go", "Cry Murder" and the amazing "Fighter" into a short festival set that left everyone hungry for more. Just back from a month overseas, this gig was a homecoming worth celebrating.

The band is incredibly powerful, putting more energy and passion into their show than most bands. Singer Sever likes to get up close and personal with the fans, hanging off the front of the stage, getting down into the crowd, jumping up on the bar doing shots, and crowd surfing. The songs are uber-powerful with relentless riffs, powerful grooves, hooks galore and Sever's amazing vocal delivery.

Check out the pics and some tunes and don't miss this band next time they're through your town. Here are the tunes from Sumo Cyco's CMW Bovine set list:

A Primitive Evolution closed out a heavy night at Bovine Sex Club for CMW 2017 with dark intensity that you can't help but move to.

Their sound features heavy, foreboding gloom with groovy, head-nodding beats, distorted guitar and bass riffs for days with intense vocals. They even brought funked up heaviness to their cover of Motörhead's "Ace of Spades".